


Writing is Hard

by Perspicacious



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Tower, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Domestic Avengers, I call him DUM-E instead of Dummy, M/M, Mentions of Firefly Ellen Lost and Monsters vs. Aliens, Not Iron Man 3 Compliant, Possibly Pre-Slash, Tony Being Tony, Tony Fucking Stark, alcohol involved (but no drunk characters), light cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 20:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1756067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perspicacious/pseuds/Perspicacious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony writes a letter to Steve. It's harder than he lets on in the final products.<br/>Also, toast. </p><p>I own nothing, please don't sue me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Writing is Hard

Tony Stark sat at his desk, staring at the blank page. Well, the electronic blank page on his computer screen. Which made it even more stressful because his handwriting could be intentionally made indecipherable, but he kind of _had_ to re-read typed print. He briefly considered writing the letter in Wingdings and leaving it for the poor man to figure out. At least then Tony would never be able to reread what he had written.

Tony wanted to put as little effort into these letters as possible. Typing took effort. So he wrote pages and pages in his head, deleted half of them, and cut out the smarmy bits that he has grown used to including in every paper or speech as part of being Tony Stark--all before even touching the keyboard. Okay, maybe he put a little effort into them.

The smarmy bits are him too, but he liked to think he was on his best behavior in his letters. His best was worse than a lot of peoples’ worst, but hey, when you’re a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist no one on Earth (or from another dimension or whatever) expects you to be a humble and polite (and entirely sane) guy. When you’re an ancient war hero recently unfrozen and painfully obvious to the 21st century, that type of guy is pretty much a given.

After the pages and pages in his head are cut and brutally ~~castrated~~ liberated of the smarmy bits, Tony is usually left with less than a page, replying to what’s-his-faces’ latest letter. Cap. Captain Tightpants. ‘Murica Man. Star-boy. The ideas he comes up for possible nicknames (and thus, letter openings) could probably fill a few pages on their own. Some of them he was obviously never going to use--couldn’t be corrupting an American Hero too much, after all. God, how his father would have reacted had he known his son was calling Captain America the same name that Kaylee called Mal in what he thought was one of the best shows from those _old_ days (only second to _Ellen,_ since that meant watching celebrities awkwardly dance). ~~The old man would have~~ …Tony paused in his tangential train of thought, considered his position, and then promptly reversed the train until it was on the right track again. Moving along, his train of thought was totally one of those levitating trains held up by magnets. Mag-lev trains, they were called. Did they even move in reverse? If not, he could totally do it. He was Tony Fucking Stark, he could do anything. Except write--okay, _type_ a letter to his ‘team leader’.

Finally, he put ~~pen to paper~~ hands to keyboard. Selecting a lovely new nickname from the ever-growing plethora in his mind, he was off to a good start. Then the body of the letter, ugh. Eww. Gross.

Tony looked at the half dozen words on his screen. The intro was done, that was, like, a third of the letter! He totally deserved a break, anyway. Wheeling over to the bar (Yes, wheeling. Wheely chairs were for nothing if not transport between the challenge at hand and the alcohol.), he grabbed a glass and a bottle of something, then realized there was not-alcohol in the alcohol fridge. He poked it. It was squishy. Was it alive? Tony stared for a few seconds, possibly minutes. When the not-alcohol didn’t move and didn’t seem to breathe (it was hard to tell since he _was_ swiveling in the wheely chair every few seconds), he decided it was safe to handle. Safety procedures, Brucie would be so proud of him! He poured himself a glass of something in celebration, drank it, and then remembered the safe-to-handle thing.

Setting down the glass--now empty of something--and the bottle--now with significantly less of something--Tony grasped the not-alcohol in his hands. Squishing it a few times, he decided it was not dangerous. Or if it was, it wasn’t being dangerous at that very moment. He then realized he had a supercomputer at his disposal, one that hadn’t been stressing about a letter for the last two hours and, admittedly, crazily building what looked like a pair of jetpack briefs (in stylish Iron Man red and gold, of course) and a robotic martini-maker(A ‘robotini’?) for the previous sixty or so hours.

So, back to the supercomputer.  For the first time in hours, probably, Tony spoke. “J.A.R.V.I.S., what is this squishy thing--which is definitely not alcohol--that I found in my alcohol fridge?” Hey, his voice wasn’t too gravely at least.

“Sir, you’re holding a loaf of bread. The specific size and cut is considered optimal for toast.”

Tony looked at the squishy not-alcohol thing, renaming it ‘squishy not-alcohol bread’ in his mind. ‘SNAB’, for short. It did look like a lot of slices of raw toast put together. Why did toast come raw anyway? There was something ~~raw toast~~ bread was needed for…OH. Shit.

“Sir, you have been awake for several days. I suggest you take a nap, or Agent Romanoff will likely have me lock you in your bedroom for a day. She’s able to smell a lack of sleep, you know.”

“God, J.A.R.V.I.S., sleep is for the frozen and the dead!” Tony drew out the AI’s name like a petulant child. Which he basically was, in all but physical age.

“Well, Sir, you’ve taken a glass of sleep medication already, so ‘let it go’.”

Tony had just registered the _Frozen_ reference and was about to retort when he felt himself ~~inexplicably~~ predictably falling asleep.

Six hours and a shot of definitely-alcohol later, Tony was back at his computer. Feeling well-rested and full, thanks to the only slightly-burned plain toast that DUM-E had made from the SNAB, he started typing again. Unlike his usually flurry of fingers and swears when programming or spitting out a last-minute report, Tony took his time. Pulling up his mental draft, every word of every phrase was carefully selected before it was typed into existence. He would rack his brain for _the_ word to use, find a few candidates, test them each against his mental draft, and then, finally then, he would type it in. This all took only a few seconds per word in question, but it seemed like ages to a mind like Tony Stark’s. He trekked through the body of the letter, word by word. Even with his careful selections, he still took back parts here and there, deleting a thought with a single keystroke (Okay, a single keystroke held for a bit. It sounded more dramatic in his mind, like hitting the ‘Execute’ button in _Lost_ or the big button in _Monsters vs. Aliens_.)

After what felt like a lifetime of going through his mental thesaurus, he finished. Signing off his name with a perfectly Tony-y look, he was absolutely, positively, _completely_ done. Well, except for the re-read without alcohol in his system. And possibly the post-delivery re-re-read _with_ alcohol in his system.

Tony hoped that his letters were worth all this effort. He definitely thought that Steve’s letters were.

 


End file.
